


Everything I long for

by destinyofshipwreck



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:21:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21967066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinyofshipwreck/pseuds/destinyofshipwreck
Summary: Tessa thinks she may have seen him, or someone who looks like him, at the end of the dairy aisle in the Farm Boy on Wellington.
Relationships: Scott Moir/Tessa Virtue
Comments: 35
Kudos: 211





	Everything I long for

Tessa thinks she may have seen him, or someone who looks like him, at the end of the dairy aisle in the Farm Boy on Wellington with the earliest opening hours, where she only was herself owing to a last-minute rush for supermarket pastries and a frozen quiche for brunch with her visiting sister, at half-past seven when the store was empty, except for a few staff stocking shelves and whoever it was poring over the eggs.

It nags at her over brunch and all afternoon, and into the subsequent week; and it nags sharp enough that she finds herself pacing in her kitchen on the next Sunday morning at six-thirty. Fully dressed, coffee made, nothing time-sensitive to do, so she drives there, to the same store, and makes a slow circuit with a basket slung over one arm and without a shopping list.

In the freezer aisle next to the Tenderflake pie shells, someone who looks familiar in her peripheral vision catches her eye, someone dark-haired with a dancer's grace who's clearly densely-muscled under his peacoat, but it's someone four inches too tall, and she sighs with a feeling she can’t pinpoint, neither disappointment nor relief.

A voice behind her says, "Tessa, is that you?"

He also has a basket, not a cart, and she nearly knocks it out of his hands with the corner of her own basket when she turns to face him, and it is Scott, after all.

"No way," she says. "You can't seriously not have recognized me. It hasn't been that long."

"I thought I saw you last weekend, but I wasn't sure," he says. "Your hair's different."

She'd cut it into a pixie two years ago and sworn off dyeing it, letting the greys halfway overtake its natural red-brown, grown it out into a long bob that nearly brushes her shoulders.

"I guess it is," she says.

"What are you doing grocery shopping at this ungodly hour," he says, and looks appraisingly at her basket. Eggs, dish soap, six of the darkest Lindt chocolate bars discounted to three for five dollars, a punnet of pallid out-of-season Roma tomatoes.

"I cook now," she says, breezily. "And I don't have time to talk, sorry, I have to get back. Home. To cook."

"At seven in the morning," he says. "I'm glad you're back in town."

"I am, too," she says nearly automatically, surprised that it sounds true. "Maybe see you around."

She hazards a glance back when she turns toward the checkout at the end of the aisle, but Scott has engrossed himself in the frozen desserts and isn't looking her way.

It really is more convenient to get shopping done very first thing in the morning on a Sunday before the store gets crowded, is how she justifies it to herself outside the Farm Boy at quarter after seven the following weekend. No waiting in line, no throngs of people to maneuver around, practically empty parking lot, no traffic.

Scott is in the bread aisle comparing two brands of whole grain sandwich loaf when she finds him.

"We can meet some other place at a more reasonable time," he says. "If you were here hoping to run into me."

"I'm here to buy groceries before it gets crowded," she says.

"Of course," he says. "So am I." He runs a hand through his hair—he's grown it out so she can't tell if it’s thinning; if it's scattered with grey she can't see it in the fluorescent light. The sight of an old familiar nervous habit makes her stomach turn over.

"Gimme one of those," she says, nodding at the loaves still in his hands. "Whichever one has the most grains."

"Twelve," he says, and hands her one.

Neither of them trails the other on their separate ways through the store, but their paths cross a few times, and she's something close to gratified, she realizes, not nervous, in the way that she might be gratified to see any old friend after a long absence.

"Do you want to get lunch sometime," he asks her fifteen minutes later from the next self-checkout over from hers, and her heart leaps into her throat.

"I'm pretty busy lately," she says. He looks intent, brow furrowed, like he's also searching for some old familiar habit or for one of her anxious tells. "If I don't have my calendar in front of me I barely know what city I'm supposed to be in, so." She notices the uncertain ascending pitch of her own voice and stops herself before he has a chance to hear it too.

"Of course," he says. "I get that. I'm around, if you ever figure your schedule out."

"I might," she says.

It's the prospect of having to catch up on missed years that had given her pause, she thinks, unpacking a bag in the kitchen: bread, almond butter, oat milk, coffee, bananas, pain au chocolat.

Or, she thinks, sweeping last week's uneaten tomatoes mouldering on the counter into the trash, the pressure to have feelings settled enough about her own life to describe it to someone who cares. She had not associated _Scott_ and _care_ in years, but he must, still, enough to have read her and backed off.

Or it could be, she thinks, moving her coat from the hook by the door where she'd left it onto its padded hanger in the front hall closet, that she hadn't expected the flood of warmth from talking to him again at all. The thick wool only smells like her own moisturizer, but if she'd stood closer to him, it might've smelled like the Tom Ford cologne she used to buy him, if he still wore it. She can't stop herself from burying her face in the lapel to imagine it.

It wasn't a lie to have told him she's busy, she thinks as the week wears on. It's been six months back in London in her own house, and she's been slow to settle into the solitary routine of her telecommute, slow to notice where work had crept into every hour of her day now that it’s been admitted into her home, slow to find ways to draw lines around it, to set boundaries for leisure time and keep them. Conference calls bracketing most workdays, at ten and at four. Chamomile tea and a book in the bath in the evenings, phone off. A twenty-minute brisk walk to a bakery for croissants on Saturday mornings, an audiobook in her ears.

And, three repetitions being sufficient to comprise a new habit, Sunday finds her in the parking lot at the Farm Boy at five minutes after seven, takeout coffee in one hand, scanning the cars for anything that looks like Scott might drive it. She'd known him as a sportscar man, but there's nothing like that here, just a handful of pickups and dusty older sedans spread out the length of the lot.

She makes three full circuits of the store's perimeter with a basket of mushrooms and greens, and lard and flour for a quiche from scratch, and a five-pound box of clementines, and Scott nowhere to be seen. He finds her at the self-checkout, on his way in, flushed from the cold and out of breath.

"Sorry I'm late," he says.

"What for," she says. "It's not a date."

"Right," he says. "There was an accident, traffic was pretty backed up, that's all. Do you need a hand?"

The word "date" escaping her lips in relation to Scott had so startled her that the fistful of greens she'd weighed before she said it was still dangling limply from her hand, the machine flashing a reminder to return the scanned item to the bagging area.

"No," she says. "I'm good."

"So long as you're good," he says, not sounding convinced.

"I do want to get lunch sometime," she says. "But I can't do lunch because of work stuff and time zones, but if we could—"

"Dinner," says Scott. An offer of dinner, and the word "date", and she can feel her face flush with humiliation.

"I don't want to go to some place that has our framed photo on the wall," she says. "As us. I can't—"

"Hey," he says. "It's okay." His hand reaches for hers, but only to gently loosen her deathgrip on the bundle of chard and set it in her canvas tote next to the mushrooms; then he leans past her for the box of clementines, the pound of lard, the flour, ringing them through while she composes herself. "We just met each other at the grocery store, alright? There's a new place a few blocks from the Gardens, I've never been there before. Hang on, I'll look up the address. I can make us a reservation, any day you want."

His fumbling for his phone affords her a chance to dig in her own coat pocket for a kleenex for her eyes, now threatening tears.

"There," he says, pointing out the address, tactfully avoiding eye contact.

"Friday I'm free after six," she says.

"I'll meet you there at seven," he says.

"Scott," she says. "Thank you."

"How do you know my name if we just met at the store," he says. "You better pay for your stuff before the machine calls security on you."

"Good point," she says.

Her coat does smell like him when she hangs it in the hall closet, not like cologne, but like sweat, and a faint citrus that might be his soap.

The restaurant is a gastropub that's neither to her taste nor Scott's so far as she can recall, but she's relieved that she can dress as casual as she'd like; jeans, a silk chiffon blouse that ties at the neck with her bra visible through it, a glencheck blazer buttoned high to cover the visible bra, stiletto boots, and her mom's old Chanel watch, settled on after an hour of indecisive pacing around the bedroom in front of the open closet door.

Scott was early, and he grins when she slides into the chair opposite him.

"I'm glad you came," he says.

"Me too," she says.

"No pictures on the walls of anyone," he says, and she turns to look. There are framed photographs, but only of Ontario winter landscapes in gloomy black and white.

She demurs at his offer of a drink and he course-corrects to match her, icewater for icewater, and they choose two entrees to split from a menu of nearly undifferentiated heavy richness, one warm salad that at least promises vinegar and a cassoulet about which she holds little optimism.

"So," she says, dinner ordered. "Tell me about yourself."

"What could you possibly not already know," he says.

"We met at the store, remember. What do you tell strange women when you meet them for dinner."

"I was an Olympic athlete," he says, carefully, looking down at his hands folded in his lap. "A long time ago, and I’m retired from competition now. I manage a skating rink with a few different teams and clubs, and since I'm the boss, I get to drive a Zamboni whenever I want."

"Girls love that, do they," she says.

"They actually do," he says. "I can fix a broken Zamboni, too, but I usually save that for when I know she's serious about me. Now you."

"No one goes on a first date with me who hasn't already been briefed," she says.

"That's cheating," he says. "What's the brief."

"Usually it's people I met through work," she says. "So they know me because we worked on a shoot together, or we were on the same board of directors or something. We talk about dinner or we talk about them."

"Scott from the Farm Boy never stood a chance," he says.

"He didn't," she says.

"Hypothetically," he says. "Pretend you met someone. What's your story."

"I was an Olympic athlete, but I'm retired now," she says, with the same flat delivery as him, and he makes a face at her. "Now I work in production, for commercial photoshoots mostly, but I give talks for girls' sports charities whenever I can."

"Lots of production work in London?" he says.

"No," she says. "But we can do most of the work remotely, and only be onsite for the shoot itself, and I love London, I grew up here."

"But you had to leave because of the Olympic athlete thing," he says, and she nods. "That’s a nice story. Too bad you never get to tell it."

"Nicer story than that guy behind you," she says, and points toward him with her chin, so his date across the table wouldn't notice. "Don't turn around, but I think they're on a bad first date."

She can only half-hear the woman over the restaurant music but what she gathers is she's a materials engineer at Bombardier, and her date, some meathead local business owner with a snowmobiling hobby and a sense that he could teach her a thing or two about engines.

"What's her expression look like," murmurs Scott, barely audible, and Tessa twists her lips into a polite smile that doesn't reach her eyes, arranges her brow into a perplexed furrow, and shoots a pained look toward the door. Scott claps a hand over his mouth.

"She's getting up," whispers Tessa, and the woman brushes the wrinkles out of her dress and walks past her toward the washrooms.

"Don't turn around," whispers Scott. "She's talking to the hostess. My God. Is she—damn, I thought she was making a break for it, but she's not."

The date has his phone out to text someone, but he’s too far away for her to read over his shoulder, across a table and an aisle. A few minutes after the woman has returned from the washroom, steaks still on the table in front of both of them, the hostess approaches to interrupt, and the woman rises to her feet and pulls her coat on, muttering an apology and taking cash out of her wallet.

"Before she finished her steak," whispers Tessa. "Harsh."

"How does that still work," whispers Scott, horrified, once the woman is out of earshot. "If there's an emergency, wouldn't somebody have called her on her cell? But he believes it?"

His face is red with the effort of not laughing aloud as behind him, the man at the other table calls someone to tell them his date was going well.

"She drove all the way here from North York on a Friday night and now she's driving back," Tessa whispers, and Scott almost cackles, disguising it unconvincingly with a coughing fit.

"I'm ordering dessert," she says once the meathead snowmobiler has left, too. "I don't care what it is. Chocolate anything."

"I'm buying," says Scott. "I made you meet me here, it's my fault you had to overhear all that."

"I wanted to," she says.

"To hear that guy lie to his buddy on the phone," he says.

"You know what I mean," she says.

The only chocolate item on the sparse dessert menu is a cheesecake covered in ganache so sweet it makes her jaw ache, and their knuckles almost brush twice, once when he reaches for the second dessert fork to take a token bite, and once when he waves her hand away from the bill, and her heart pounds in her ears like it might've if he'd taken her hand in his.

"Thanks for a nice evening," he says at the door afterward. "Where'd you park, I'll walk you to your car."

"A better first date than that poor woman had," she says.

"Is that what this was," he says.

"You keep forgetting we never met before a few weeks ago," she says. "Scott from the Farm Boy, it's been a pleasure."

"Can I see you again," he says quickly, and her stride falters. "Or can I give you my phone number so you can text me in the middle of a first date, or any date. I'll bail you out of anywhere, no questions asked."

"Yes," she says, and he cracks a smile. "Here's my phone, add yourself."

He does, first name and last, and texts himself a 100 emoji before handing it back to her.

She doesn't text him, nor does he text her, but she ends up in the grocery store parking lot at 6:55 two mornings later, idly scanning the cars nearby again. What would a rural Ontario Zamboni repairman drive. Not the white panel van that looks like it's been here overnight, not the too-recently-washed black Jetta, not the Sierra so badly rusted that its occupants could probably see the road under their feet.

She heads inside at five past and Scott catches up to her a few minutes later, next to the boxed salad greens. She'd taken a cart this time, and her coat is neatly folded in the bottom tier, and his is unbuttoned. If she pressed herself against his chest, she'd smell like him for the rest of the morning; but she sets the thought decisively aside.

"Good morning," he says. "I'm getting a coffee from that kiosk by the door, can I grab one for you? It's not as bad as it looks like it'll be." He's halfway turned around before she can stammer a yes and a good morning yourself.

He's back a few moments later, and the coffee is bitter even over the sugar and the generous splash of cream he'd added, like she used to drink in the off-season when he made it for her at home. This thought, too, she tucks away in the back of her mind next to the thought of the smell of his sweat on her skin, and closes the door firmly behind it.

"I have to be out of town for work for part of this week and next," she says. "And the weekend."

"We're just running into each other by coincidence, you know," he says. "But I'll miss it."

"I'm only gone for a week and a half," she says. "You'll probably live."

"I'm going to go get my groceries now," he says. "You're welcome for the coffee."

"Thanks," she says to his back, "for remembering how I like it."

"Lucky guess," he says, and he flashes her a smile over his shoulder, and she's grinning back at him, over the protestations of her better judgment.

On Wednesday morning in her room in the Victorian in Gastown she's roused before dawn by a text message from Scott: a photo of his hand with a styrofoam cup from the coffee kiosk and a cart in the background.

She texts him back an hour later, once she's up and showered: a photo of the Keurig on the nightstand and its neighbouring basket of powdered creamer and Splenda packets.

_Rough_ , is his response.

She sends a follow-up from the restaurant downstairs, a photo of a croissant and a cortado adorned with a rosetta.

_That’s more like it_ , he texts back.

They exchange more coffees as the week drags on, more hotel breakfasts, Starbucks on location, a late-night Keurig drunk out of a takeout cup from the afternoon, her lipstick marks still on the rim; and from him, a Leafs mug next to a laptop with a spreadsheet of ice times, a Tim Hortons cup balanced on the boards rinkside, a white Ikea mug on a granite kitchen counter.

She texts him on Tuesday night, a little tipsy after drinks over dinner with her team: chamomile tea in a small porcelain hotel mug, her legs stretched out on the bed, still damp from the bath; at the edge of the frame, the hem of her floral silk robe that hits her at the knee.

_When are you back_ , he responds immediately.

_Tomorrow afternoon_ , she writes, and when there's an incoming call from him a moment later she's too surprised not to accept it.

"Two things," he says. "So it's quicker to call, I thought. What time does your flight get in?"

"I think it's five, but I'd need to check," she says.

"Do you need a ride back into town?"

It takes her such a long moment to formulate an answer that he thinks the connection's bad and asks if she's still there.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I am, and yeah, I didn't leave my car at the airport, so I do need a ride back from someone, I'd appreciate it."

"Text me your flight and I'll be there," he says. "And the second thing."

"That was already two things," she says.

"The second thing is, I'd like to take you out for real sometime, if you want."

She can feel her pulse in her throat again, and a tautness across her chest constricting her ribs when she tries to correct for it with a deep breath, and a nauseating lightheadedness she can't blame on the drinks at dinner two hours ago.

"I'm not hanging up on you, I just need to think for a second," she says, and he's quiet while she does.

"You can say no," he says, finally.

"I don't want to say no," she says.

"I like getting to spend time with you," he says. "Like—I know we have a lot to catch up on, but I don't—"

"No need," she says, swallowing hard. "We met at the store, and we hit it off."

"Yes," he says. "You're my type. Couldn't help it."

The tension in her chest eases, but not the elevated heart rate, not the lightheadedness. His voice in her ear is low and gravelly.

"What type is that," she says.

"Brunette," he says.

"Barely."

"Short brunette," he continues. "Green eyes. Smartass. Muscles."

"You have no way of knowing that," she says.

"I saw you sling that flour sack around," he says. "And you were an athlete, you said. Old habits."

"I hit the gym next door every morning this week, yeah," she says.

"I know it when I see it," he says.

"Pretty specific type for a person to have," she says.

"I make it work," he says. 

His voice in her ear is so familiar she can imagine how his breath on her cheek would feel, hot and close.

"We'll see how your second date goes," she says. "I'm reserving judgment."

"You say that to all the boys," he says. 

"Gotta keep 'em in line somehow," she says.

"What else do you say," he says, and his voice has an edge to it now. "You're on the road a lot, how do you manage that."

"I meet people in cities I visit for work," she says. "Dates here and there. I like things casual, so it's fine if we don't see a lot of each other."

"You make it count," he says.

"I make it work," she says, and he laughs, voice dropping even lower.

"How do you make it work," he says. "When you're going to see someone. If he's gonna pick you up from the airport and take you someplace."

"I don't do it with a phone call," she says. "So you'd better hang up if you wanna know."

"I'd better," he says. "See you soon, Tess."

Her room has an exposed brick wall with a wide full-length mirror in full view of the bed, and she shimmies to the foot of it, splayed legs draped over the edge, robe fallen open past midthigh, lips parted, hair mussed, one hand cupping her breast, better judgment out the window, and takes a cameraphone picture, sending it with no comment.

_Jesus_ , he writes, and _What time tomorrow_.

At the airport in London he won't let her lift her own suitcases off the baggage carousel, or carry them to the parking lot, even though there's two of them, fifty pounds each. It turns out he drives a Subaru, and he slings both of her bags in the back, the seats already folded down.

"Tell me where to turn off for your place," he says once they're well into town.

"You practically lived there," she says. "Did you really—"

"We never met before a month ago and I've never been to your house, so, I need directions," he says, and she catches his drift.

"The next right, then a left after a few blocks," she says. "I'll tell you when."

He pulls into her driveway a few minutes later through several inches of freshly fallen snow. She unlocks the door and leads him in, pointing out where in the foyer he can leave the suitcases, the rack with the rubber mat beneath it for his boots to drip dry.

He can't decide what to do with his hands: stuck in his coat pockets, twisting together, brushing his hair back from his forehead, rubbing the back of his neck; she almost wants to take them between her own.

"I need a shower, do you mind waiting," she says instead, at the same moment that he says, "I'll shovel your driveway."

"I pay a service," she says. "They're usually pretty prompt."

"Ah," he says.

"There's drinks in the fridge, if you’d take off your coat," she offers.

"Take your time," he says.

In the shower her nerves resist her best efforts to exfoliate them off or steam them out, even under too-hot water, and she gives up when it runs out, shocking her with a jolt of cold. She piles her damp hair in a knot on top of her head, pulls on a pair of sweatpants from the bedroom down the hall and a thick robe that nearly reaches the floor. It's not a provocative look.

Padding back downstairs barefoot, she finds him in the kitchen with a grapefruit Lacroix, coat off, in front of an open cabinet, the one with the Olympic medals stacked neatly at one end of the centre shelf, and she stops dead in the doorway.

"Sorry," he says, tone sheepish. "I was looking for a glass. You leave these here so you can see them every day?"

_Thank God_ , she thinks, and then: "So I wouldn't see them. I don't spend a lot of time in here."

"Would never have guessed from your grocery shopping habits," he says, and gently closes the cabinet.

"Doesn't everyone keep them in a junk drawer," she says. "Where did you put yours."

"At the rink," he says. "All the memorabilia's there, it was a little tourist attraction for a while."

Some of her own costumes are probably with his medals, she realizes, all the ones she'd left for the skate shop, before Scott's uncle retired and they closed it down. There was a time she would've been able to guess his answer without needing to hear him say it.

"Actually I had this thing," she said. "I was—I got scared I'd judge myself by my successes, and think I'd already done everything I would ever want to do in my life, so I put it all away instead."

His mouth thins out into a straight line and he looks away, like he might be about to cry.

"But now it's just where the medals live," she adds. "I'm not scared of that anymore."

"Mine are in the front hall, but I only ever come in the back, so I never have to see them either," he admits.

"Come upstairs with me," she says. "Please."

He nods and sets the empty Lacroix can on the counter next to the sink and steps toward her, and she eases herself into his tentative embrace like she's coming home.

"Are you sure," he says. He wraps his arms lightly around her ribs, not pulling her closer, and she reaches up to cup his jaw in her palm. He's clean-shaven, skin smoother than she'd ever felt it.

"Come upstairs with me before I drag you there," she says, and he laughs and kisses her hair, then her forehead, then her mouth, as she tilts her chin up to meet him.

Had any recollection of kissing him escaped her purposeful forgetting, it was an inaccurate one; his lips on hers, and the tip of his tongue, shock her with their newness. But muscle memory guides her through the backward stumble through the kitchen and into the foyer and around the corner to the stairs without breaking apart from him, like any waltz they'd ever danced in close hold.

"Not the bedroom," she whispers as they hit the landing, and he nods and pulls her around the corner into the little library nook off the hall with the tall mirror and the off-centre window, and backs her into the oversized chaise longue between the bookcases.

And he helps her with her robe, folding it and setting it on the corner table after she shucks it off, helping her tug off the sweats, and she’s naked in front of him for the first time since—and she sets that unfinished thought, too, aside, reaching first to unbutton his shirt, then for his belt buckle.

"Not before the second date," he says, pushing her hand away. "I'm not a cad."

"What do you call this," she says. "A sales pitch?"

"A favour," he says. "Friend needed a ride from the airport, that's all."

She leans back on the chaise and he squeezes in next to her, and kisses her again, even softer, and she can't avert her gasp when one of his hands curves around her breast, just as soft.

"I wanna know," he says, "what you did last night after you hung up the phone."

"What did you do," she says.

"Spent a lot of time admiring that photo you sent me," he says. The hand on her breast tightens and he brushes her nipple with a calloused fingertip and her eyes would've rolled back in her head with stupid, overwhelmed pleasure, if she hadn't squeezed them shut.

"Thought about you," she says. "About what it'd be like to fuck you. Scott from the Farm Boy."

"You fucked yourself," he says.

"Mm-hmm," she says.

"Show me," he says.

She'd squeezed her eyes shut tight the night before too, trying hard to think of the gravel voice and the fantasy of an interested stranger, and not Scott's sweat on her skin or the smell of his cologne in her sheets or how thick he'd always felt inside her.

The Scott here now swears under his breath when she slides one finger into herself, finding no resistance, then another to follow the first, and he follows her fingers with his, and swears again to find her slick with want, and again when she bucks her hips against his hand.

Eyes still shut, she feels him slide down the chaise and spreads her thighs his shoulder width apart, and withdraws her fingers from herself to spread her lips for him, and he swears again, _fucking beautiful_ , and kisses the inside of each thigh, and finally, finally traces a path with his tongue from where his fingers are buried inside her, and wraps his lips around her aching clit.

The Scott she'd loved would have pushed her over the edge with the tip of his tongue and her clit between his teeth, so light around her she could hardly feel them, and the Scott knelt on the floor between her legs with his fingers inside her does, too, but only after she tangles his hair around her trembling fingers and whispers _please_.

"Do you still skate sometimes," he says, a few minutes after. He's propped up on one elbow and his mouth is still wet with her, sweat beaded on his forehead, and two fingers of the other hand are still inside her and his thumb is light against her clit, and to punctuate the question he presses softly, and her thighs tremble.

"I never told you what my sport was," she says, and he dips his head low to kiss her collarbone.

"I read your Wikipedia page," he says. "Since you're such an enigma. What about your skating partner, what happened to him."

"Do you usually ask women about their exes when you're inside them," she says.

"Fair," he says. "Another time. Just here to find out what you like."

He's started to move the fingers inside her again, setting a languid pace, matching each stroke with a stroke from his thumb; she can feel herself dripping into his palm. She squeezes around the fingers, knuckles to fingertips, and hears him inhale through his teeth.

"And I'm just here to make you regret your commitment to not taking your pants off," she says, and he twists his wrist on the next upstroke, curling his fingers and making her gasp again, pressing down harder with his thumb.

"I'll never regret taking my time with you," he says.

It's only a few moments more before she's too sensitive for his hands, her exhausted body wrung out beyond the likelihood of a second orgasm, and he kisses her again, deeply, so she can taste herself on his lips and tongue.

"If I don't get dinner soon I'm gonna die on the spot," she says, and he kisses her once more on the cheek for good measure, then helps her to her feet.

She tugs the robe back on and he retrieves his shirt from the floor, and he follows her back downstairs, watches her order a pizza from an app, pulls a couple bottles of Fin du Monde out of the back of her fridge, pops the caps with the callous on his thumb, hands her one; she leads him to the living room and sinks into the chesterfield, and when he sits next to her, shifts halfway into his lap, and stays there until the pizza shows up half an hour later and he disentangles himself to stand up and get the door.

"Thanks for remembering what I like on a pizza," he says, opening the box to find green peppers and black olives and sausage and feta.

"Lucky guess," she says.

They kill the pizza in companionable silence, and Scott takes the box and the empties to the recycling bins in the garage, then returns to the living room where she's still sprawled on the chesterfield, buttoning his coat.

"I'm gonna hit the road," he says. "I have stuff early in the morning."

"Zamboni stuff," she says, through a half-stifled yawn.

"Yeah," he says. "Sleep it off, Tess. I'll see you soon."

"Lock the deadbolt behind you, there's a key under the mat," she says. She's scarcely still awake to hear the click of the bolt sliding home, and soundly asleep only a few moments later.

On Sunday morning he finds her at the self-checkout again, where there's hardly anything in her basket that counts as a food item. Trash and recycling bags, paper bags for the compost, Windex, laundry detergent, silver polish, Murphy's oil soap for the hardwood, half a dozen apple danishes, a bunch of half-ripe bananas.

"How was the rest of your workweek," he says.

"Good," she says. "I was behind on invoicing so I caught myself up, and my art director and I had a long call with a client about a lookbook for a jeweller we're working on, it's almost all ironed out, and the packaging designer we hired sent her stuff for it to the 3D renderer, so it should be back soon."

"I understood about half of that," he says, and she bites her lip, about to apologize, and he clarifies, "It's nice not knowing what you do all day, it adds to your air of mystery."

"I'm kind of like a choreographer," she says.

"Dumb it down for me, why don't you," he says, but his smile is fond.

"Sounds like some sellout thing, but it feels like I'm still getting to tell stories when we put together something like this," she says. "Just more abstract ones than we—than I ever did, on the ice, with characters and acting classes."

"I'll track down old performance tapes of yours and watch them someday," he says. "I didn't tell anyone any stories this week, but I did resurface the rink a bunch of times because our guy who normally does it was out, and changed some bearings in an auger."

"Hot," she says. "I'm picturing you, like, shirtless, with overalls, and a screwdriver in one hand. Smear of motor oil across your forehead. You know."

"Pretty much," he says. "Looking good is most of the work. Speaking of."

She looks up at his pause. He does look good, even in the harsh light with his face cast half in shadow.

"I was wondering when you'll let me take you out again. Doesn't have to be soon if you're tied up with your sales catalogue choreography."

She wrinkles her nose. "Don't make it sound so boring. Anyway, next week should be fine, I shouldn't have anything that runs late."

"Friday?" he asks. "Anywhere specific you'd like?"

"Not the same place as last time," she says. "Otherwise, surprise me."

"Someplace nice," he says.

"Make it cocktail dress nice," she says. “Wear a tie.”

"I'll pick you up at seven, now that I know where you live," he says.

The dress she decides on is red, nearly translucent silk crepe, cut low and wide at the neck and on the bias below the waist, where it hits her above the knee; and she matches it with red suede stiletto pumps, higher than she usually wears these days, and a scarlet lip, as matte as the silk and the leather. In the heels she's as tall as Scott when he arrives at her door at seven precisely.

"Jesus," he says when he sees her.

"No, it's Tessa, remember, we met at the grocery store," she says, and he closes the door behind himself and sweeps her into an embrace, off her feet, and she buries her face in his neck, and he does smell like cologne, not the old fragrance she used to buy him, but a subtly different one, still inflected with oud.

He's hard under his slacks and she wraps her legs around his waist, his arms still supporting her weight, and she's rewarded with a throb where he's pressed against her thigh.

"Take me upstairs, I don't care about dinner," she says.

At the landing he turns right for the nook with the chaise longue and she digs her heel into his thigh. "Bedroom."

"If you're sure," he says.

She'd left on a bedside lamp, and in the half-light he sets her down and unzips her dress, and she pulls off the stilettos and loosens his four-in-hand and unbuttons his shirt, then the slacks, and he drapes each garment carefully over the back of the armchair in the corner.

He's almost shy when he eases her backward onto the bed and follows her after, kissing her tentatively like he's afraid of smearing her lipstick, shifting onto his side to face her, sliding his fingertips under the lace band of her thong.

"I was saving this for dinner," she says. "Thought I'd take it off halfway through for you if you were on your best behaviour."

"We'll have to try again sometime," he says, and slides it down her thighs and off.

He shivers when she reaches down the front of his boxer briefs and touches him for the first time, wraps her fingers loosely around him; and he exhales softly when she drags the tip of her thumb to his frenulum and presses there.

"Take those off unless you were saving them for something, too," she says, and he tugs them down and shoves them away, without dislodging her hand. He's dripping through her fingers, and she curves her palm over the tip of his cock and smears it down his length, and his breath stutters.

There's a box of condoms in the nightstand drawer, within arm's reach. Scott makes a move to reach for the slacks on the armchair, where there's probably a condom in his wallet.

"I have condoms," she says. "But I don't—I want—"

He groans something inaudible into her neck and when she turns onto her back he follows her, kneeling between her thighs, one arm braced against the mattress to support his weight and the other hand in her hair, and he kisses her deeply when she does what she wants, which is to smear his precome against her own dripping cunt and press the tip of his cock against her swollen clit.

For hours she used to tease him like this, the Scott who lived with her for a little while in London, the Scott who moved in with her in Montreal before that. This Scott teases her back, guiding just the tip of himself into her and withdrawing, even though he shudders to do it; and he shudders again when he slides in deeper on the next stroke and the next, and again when he's buried all the way inside her, and again when he slides out of her to spill himself across her cunt, the hand in her hair clenched into a fist.

He sinks into the mattress next to her to catch his breath, and moves the hand from her hair to her cunt, drawing his come across her clit, almost too slick for any friction; but she’s so swollen it hardly takes any pressure to push her into her own orgasm, and she stills his hand with her own on his wrist to catch her breath herself.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"I missed you," he whispers back. She draws his hand to her mouth to kiss his fingers, and the taste of his come is viscous and bitter in her mouth, her own heady and sharp.

"Here's a question," she says, once her breath has stabilized. "Do you remember the last time we slept together."

"A couple minutes ago, I think," he says.

"You know what I mean," she says, and he's quiet for a minute, searching his recollection.

"I think we were on some work trip," he says. "But I can't—was it in a conference hotel in Toronto? Or was it—"

"I thought it was overseas someplace," she says. “Spain maybe? But for work, definitely. I think I—I don’t think we argued, I think—"

"Spain's not ringing any bells," he says. "But it's good, maybe, that it wasn't some dramatic blowout thing where we were angry, or—"

"I guess," she says. "If it was just, like a routine thing, like we didn't know—" she trails off.

"It was the last time," he says, and she nods.

"I think I thought it was inevitable, we'd just be together."

"It was terrifying," he says. "Not feeling like you were a choice," and it's all she can do to nod again, unable to push any sound past the lump in her throat.

"Sorry we missed your reservation," she says, once she can speak.

"Oh," he says. "We didn't, it's not 'til eight-thirty, I figured we might be waylaid."

"Scott Moir, you told me you weren't a cad," she says.

"Your dress is perfect but you might wanna fix your face," he says, and she laughs, kisses the corner of his mouth, leaving another smear of lipstick he'll have to fix himself.

On Sunday she tucks a pair of insulated stainless steel travel mugs into a tote bag before heading for the Farm Boy at ten minutes to seven. Scott's leaning against one of the pillars outside the west entrance, hands shoved deep in his coat pockets.

"Hi," he says. "I'll get us coffee. Go ahead, I'll catch up."

"Not in styrofoam," she says, digging out her mugs and handing over both.

She loiters near the bulk bins on the near side of the produce section, in view of the coffee cart, until Scott has paid and doctored both coffees with cream, and handed her one.

"You know what this reminds me of," she says, as they set off side by side through the empty aisle between crates of apples and pears, only a basketwidth between them. "All those early mornings in all those grubby hockey rinks, wherever we could get ice time, at four in the morning—"

"I wasn't gonna say it," says Scott. "But yeah. I missed when it was just us."

"I missed it too," she says.

"We can have it again," he says. "You know, there's a couple weeks in the year when some of the clubs are on break, at my rink, and if you want private ice we can get it, and it wouldn't be in the middle of the night. Six or seven, downright civilized."

Her pulse pounds in her throat again with another unidentifiable feeling, not grief, not dread.

"How would you feel about that," he says.

"When do you normally take women skating with you," she says. "How many dates before."

"Never have," he says.

She veers right to examine a display of early season asparagus bundled up with elastic, and he waits tactfully for her to formulate some kind of reply.

"Me either," she says. She hadn't noticed the worried crease on his brow until it suddenly eases. "But I don't want to—to rush into something too familiar, you know, fall into anything."

"You mean it about we met at the store," he says, raising an eyebrow.

"I like not knowing everything about you anymore," she says. "Having our own lives." The thought arrives with shocking clarity that she'd like to enjoy the prospect of falling in love, not to be in love already and not know what to do, but she can't bring herself to say it.

"You want to date," he says, and he's grinning hugely. "You always wanted big plans and firm timeframes before. This is new."

"Lots of things are new," she says. "We'll have to figure them out."

"Tessa from the Farm Boy, it would be an honour," he says. His grin's infectious; she couldn't wipe her own off her face if she'd tried.

Side by side at the self-checkout he drains his coffee and offers the mug back to her, but she shakes her head. "Just bring it back eventually." An image of it springs to mind, occupying the snatches of his life she'd seen—momentarily forgotten in the cupholder of his Subaru and raced back for; balanced on the boards at the rink, maybe dented if it were knocked off by an errant puck or elbow; upturned in a drying rack on that granite countertop.

The unplaceable feeling, the lightheaded heart in the throat, not fear, not grief, is optimism, she realizes.

"It's only fair if I pick the restaurant next time," she says at the door, hands full of grocery bags: asparagus, new potatoes, eggs, chamomile tea, apple and blueberry danishes. "I'll text you, but if I don't, I'll see you next week anyhow."

"I won't be late," he says.


End file.
